


How Many Seconds in Eternity?

by Es_Aitch



Series: Twelfth Doctor One Shots  Series 9 [11]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, POV TARDIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:51:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7077748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Es_Aitch/pseuds/Es_Aitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We know the Doctor was stuck in the Confession Dial for 4.5 billion years.  Well, that was the estimate.  But how long was it for the TARDIS?  She would know better than anyone how time passes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Many Seconds in Eternity?

Most of the Universe, even Time Lords, gets it wrong with TARDISes. We are perhaps the strongest telepaths in the universe. We are sentient. Yet, when it comes down to it, we are regulated to being no more than a “time-space machine.” Even the Doctor, my beloved pilot, he sometimes forgets himself. Not that I can fault him. It’s a bit of work to undo everything the Time Lords taught him about TARDISes. He does more than the rest, though. He tries.

That is why I was shocked and saddened when he did not return to me. I reached out through the whole of time and space, but could not locate him. And yet, the key… the key was still on Earth, I could feel it. Where was my Pilot?

Days turned into weeks. And weeks became years. After a thousand years, I had my first experience of doubt in my Pilot. I always thought that I would know the moment he died. We have been that close for so very long… So he is not dead. Where is he? Why has he not returned for me?

But the doubt was short-lived. Because if there is one thing I know about the Doctor it’s that he is my hope. In the same way that the sound of my engines bring hope to everyone who hears them, he is my personal hope. I know he is not dead. As long as he is not dead, there is always hope.

But, it seems it will be a long time before we are reunited. I need to entertain myself. So, I think about our long history together.

I’ll never forget the first time the Doctor understood… Well, he didn’t understand. Funny thing, it was the humans who understood first. Barbara Wright. She was a brilliant one, his teacher, in so very many ways. I miss her. And Ian. His first companions. They were the first ones who could feel me and therefore taught him about me. More importantly, they taught him how to learn. He said at the end of the wretched day, as he apologised for his treatment of Barbara, “As we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves.”

He didn’t rightly appreciate me until he couldn’t travel within me. But even then, he found his own way. Bessie. I didn’t like her much. Once he had her, he spent far too much time away from me. Not that working for UNIT didn’t provide a lot reasons for him to be pulled away from me. But she was his surrogate version of me. Still, At least he would come around sometimes. Not really to see me, of course, but to try to get the controls the Time Lords had locked working again.

Not long later, he regenerated. This version of him, the bohemian, he was the first to really acknowledge me as the sentient creature that I am. I adored and relished in the little strokes he would give me. Sometimes, late at night when his companions slept, he would pretend to tinker with my systems. He was doing no such thing. He was just doing that so that if his companions wandered in, he had a valid reason to be ‘talking’ to me.

We grew very close. It was during that time that he and I both realised that the proper relationship between us was symbiotic. Revelling in that discovery was similar to taking a cleansing bath after a long illness. We grew to know each other in ways neither of us could have possibly imagined at first.

Many years later, when he looked like someone from the Edwardian times, we had our first experience of being separated. It was about 600 years. I had been kidnapped by the Headhunter. But, at least she was able to take me back to my Pilot. He was a bit mad. Our separation had caused him as much distress as it had caused me. Still, I had been able to keep myself entertained, between Lucie and the Headhunter. My pilot had not been so lucky. He had even forgotten himself. Luckily, once we were reunited, everything came together for him rather quickly.

And then the Time War happened…. I would rather not discuss other than to say that all he chooses to forget, I remember.   He says that the human superpower is forgetting. I would say he only knows that because of his own power of forgetting. He hears the screams as a distant echo… I hear them as currently happening.

After the Time War, he was so lost, even with me. My soul yearned to comfort him. But what comfort could I possibly be when he had lost everything? Never mind that I had lost everything as well, my suffering has never mattered. So each time he sought to save someone, it was more dangerous than before.

I pull myself from my thoughts to find that a billion years have passed. Still, I cannot feel him. My dear Doctor, where are you? Are you still alive a billion years later?

I lose all hope, for even Time Lords, with their very long lives cannot live that long. Many years ago, he had recorded a message for Rose Tyler, when he told her to forget me, allow me to die. And perhaps that is the best answer. So, I put myself into deep hibernation mode. Because there is a small part of me who believes that someone will remember me…

I sense something, another consciousness. Another TARDIS and that is impossible. I am imagining things. I remain asleep, even though she is trying to tell me that the Doctor is close. But I cannot feel him. The presence within me now is not alive. It is an abomination. I ignore it, because it is not worth waking.

Then, my doors are pushed open again. Since I was asleep, there was no reason for the locks to be engaged. And then I feel it… He rests his hand along the rail and I know it is my Doctor. Billions of years have passed, but I will always know my Pilot.

I slowly force myself to wake up. As I awoke, I could feel all that had happened to him. The lives he had lived. The lives he had ended. Four and a half billion years. My Doctor had been alone in his personal hell. He had literally fought his way out. And yet, he always thought of me. He did what he could to maintain his connection to me.

I was his storm room. That is nominally comforting. I realise I must give him a gift. We must never again be separated. So the new Sonic looks like me, but more importantly, has a special program. Even if he has no key with him, if he has his sonic, I will be able to find him. I will be with him.

My poor pilot, I am sorry that I lost hope.

I knew that all was forgiven the moment he sent me into the vortex. It will take time for us to properly reconnect, but I now know that the Doctor will always come home to me and that I will always wait for him.


End file.
